Responsibility on the agenda

CBS Responsibility Day 2009

Ethics, sustainability and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) on a business school. Those were the themes when students, business leaders, researchers, CBS’s president and dean of education gathered yesterday in connection with CBS’s first Responsibility Day.

- It is one of the first steps on the way to getting the students involved in the way we conduct research and education, says Jonas Eder-Hansen, Research Director at CBS Center for Corporate Social Responsibility.

The centre has arranged the Responsibility Day together with the Education Dean’s Office, and it will be a yearly event from now on.

Make CSR a part of your student life

Dean of Education Jan Molin and President Johan Roos showed up to discuss student life and ethics with the students. What does it mean to be a CBS student, and what kind of ethical challenges are students facing on a business school? The participants generally agreed that it is very important to be a responsible student. To work independently and to take responsibility for own learning.

- Ethics and social responsibility are increasingly important issues in the business sector, so it is only natural that we experience increased interest in the subject among the students. At the same time, businesses want more research in the area, says Jonas Eder-Hansen.

For this reason, businesses, social entrepreneurs and non-governmental organisations have been invited so the students could get a feel for the dilemmas concerning ethics, sustainability and CSR that challenge the corporate sector on a daily basis.

CSR electives on the schedule

How to communicate responsibility? How to handle ethical dilemmas in the corporate sector? How can small businesses, individual employees and consumers contribute to sustainability and social responsibility? Those were some of the questions discussed and already now, the students are able to enrol for electives focussed on many of the Responsibility Day topics.

- It is an attempt to introduce the students to corporate thinking on the subject of CSR already from the beginning of their studies, so this dimension will be taken into consideration when the students continue on to study finance, auditing, marketing, strategy, etc., says Jonas Eder-Hansen.

Watch the Responsibility Day video

The event was also used to involve students in the discussion via social media like Facebook and Twitter. To learn more about the outcome and to watch videos with reactions and debates from the CBS Responsibility Day, click here. The site also links to the Facebook- and Twitter-profiles.

The UN Principles for Responsible Management

CBS is a signatory to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) from August 2008, and the CBS Responsibility Day is a natural continuation thereof. Through PRME, CBS has committed itself to making a special effort to consider responsibility and ethics in research, education and in relation to the surrounding world (local community, partnerships, etc.).